My first rejection pretty much ended my attempts to be tradpub. Partially because I found out how much authors made back then, vs what I was making. But I did hold onto the letter.
Several years later my then partner, who was a best-selling author with said publisher asked one day to see the letter. I showed it to her and she read it, looked at it, and said, where's the next page?
I asked 'There wasn't one, why?'
"Because that's the head editors signature on the paper. You made it through the slush pile, you made it through a mid-level editor, and then it was passed up to them. They're supposed to tell you what they didn't like about it, so you can try again, as obviously everyone else there liked it."
To this day I don't know if page two got lost, or if it was because (as I also learned later) they had stopped taking any books from any new authors who had male protagonists. Only female protagonists were allowed anymore, (and this was Science Fiction).
It didn't change my mind about trying to get published, until indy came along. Then I figured, why not? Can't be any worse! (and it wasn't).
And now I'm also tradpub as well, but with someone else (Baen).
Oh, footnote: I didn't stop writing. I wrote several more novels in fact. Including what became several best-selling ones. I just didn't show them to anybody.
Yeah, my first rejections were personalized ones. I had been to enough writing conferences to know that was good, but then indie took off well enough that I wanted to chase that.
This was great, definitely not rejecting this piece.
We’re especially well-suited for rejection in our shared profession, Kal 😎 we embrace it!
Rejection is just another form of love
My first rejection pretty much ended my attempts to be tradpub. Partially because I found out how much authors made back then, vs what I was making. But I did hold onto the letter.
Several years later my then partner, who was a best-selling author with said publisher asked one day to see the letter. I showed it to her and she read it, looked at it, and said, where's the next page?
I asked 'There wasn't one, why?'
"Because that's the head editors signature on the paper. You made it through the slush pile, you made it through a mid-level editor, and then it was passed up to them. They're supposed to tell you what they didn't like about it, so you can try again, as obviously everyone else there liked it."
To this day I don't know if page two got lost, or if it was because (as I also learned later) they had stopped taking any books from any new authors who had male protagonists. Only female protagonists were allowed anymore, (and this was Science Fiction).
It didn't change my mind about trying to get published, until indy came along. Then I figured, why not? Can't be any worse! (and it wasn't).
And now I'm also tradpub as well, but with someone else (Baen).
Oh, footnote: I didn't stop writing. I wrote several more novels in fact. Including what became several best-selling ones. I just didn't show them to anybody.
Yeah, my first rejections were personalized ones. I had been to enough writing conferences to know that was good, but then indie took off well enough that I wanted to chase that.